The Term offers a fascinating insight into the world of the groups opposing Vladamir Putin’s presidency in Russia. After its screening at the Frontline Club on Friday 17 October 2014, producer Max Tuula joined the audience for a brief Q&A via Skype.

The film follows the efforts of a number of opposition leaders, including Alexei Navalny, who runs the dominant anti-corruption blog and is an active political figure, and Ilya Yashin, leader of the Solidarnost opposition movement. The third main person of interest is Ksenia Sobchak, a prominent political activist who works alongside Ilya Yashin. Sobchak is of particular focus because she is Vladamir Putin’s goddaughter.

One of the opening scenes shows a chorus of partygoers singing, “I’m free, I’ve forgotten what fear is,” swiftly followed by footage of marches and protests and clashes with the police.

The various opposition groups are not depicted as aggressive movements. Rather, The Term reveals a spider’s web of different groups carefully considering and co-ordinating their next steps. A poignant moment in the film is when Ksenia says to Ilya Yashin, “It is important to know when to stop.”

As we delve deeper and deeper into their worlds, differences of opinion over goals and aims appear. Some members want to change policy, while others wish to change president. We are exposed to the stresses and strains such an opposition movement can have on the family members of those involved. This is exemplified by the husband of Nadya, one of the Pussy Riot members, who must combine advancing his wife’s cause whilst she is in jail, with the role of being a father to their young daughter.

At times, The Term crossed into the absurd, with scenes of Putin flying with cranes or ‘singing’ Blueberry Hill at a fundraiser. However we are brought crashing back down to earth as these are juxtaposed alongside spontaneous raids and arrests of opposition members.

The film concludes with footage of Alexei Navalny, by far the most popular and powerful of the opposition leaders, speaking publicly at a demonstration. As he descends from the stage to a rapturous applause and chanting, he greets members of the crowd who have flocked in their thousands to see him. An older woman approaches him and declares most enthusiastically, “You are better than Putin, I could be useful to you.” We then find out that Navalny has since been placed under house arrest and is denied access to the internet.

The Q&A session was brief but concise as we Skyped producer Max Tuula from Moscow.

The first question asked Tuula how the three directors with very different backgrounds, Pavel Kostomarov, Alexander Rastorguev and Aleksei Pivovarov, started working together and how this film came about. Tuula explained they were “seeking to make something new” and establish a “new channel of information . . . something more human”. For two years they released daily videos online aiming to show all different faces and elements of Russian opposition. Once they realised they had multiple terabits of material, they decided to make a film.

Another question focused on the opposition movement itself, and how it was fairing now that Putin’s popularity has surged after recent events in Crimea and Ukraine. Tuula said that there is “no room for the opposition” now that around 90% of people would vote for Putin in the wake of incursions in Crimea.

An audience member asked about Navalny’s nationalist attitude and how relevant it is in modern Russia. Tuula said that while illegal immigration was still a controversial issue in Russia it was actually in line with European politics whereby if you wish to get the attention of the people you must push anti-immigration laws.

The Term is the first in a four-part series by the Frontline Club and the Czech Centre called Moments After about life after 1989. The next events in this series are:

Insight with Michael Žantovský: Havel and the Velvet Revolution on Monday 3 November 2014, 7:00 PM

First Wednesday Screening: 1989 on Wednesday 5 November 2014, 7:00 PM

Screening: Four Velvet Men Then and Now – Jan Ruml + discussion on Friday 14 November 2014, 7:00 PM.

Screening: The Term + Q&A

Friday 17 October 2014, 7:00 PM

The Term tells the unique inside story of the Russian opposition movement as Vladimir Putin settles into the Kremlin for his third term, through exclusive access to anti-corruption blogger Aleksei Navalny and other key opposition figures, including Putin’s god-daughter, Ksenia Sobchak, and Solidarnost leader, Ilya Yashin. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with with producer Max Tuula via Skype.
 

Insight with Michael Žantovský: Havel and the Velvet Revolution

Monday 3 November 2014, 7:00 PM

Twenty-five years ago in December 1989, Václav Havel was elected as President of Czechoslovakia, marking the end of the Velvet Revolution and with it, the culmination of 41 years of communist rule. By his side throughout was Michael Žantovský, Havel’s press secretary, speech-writer, translator and close friend. Žantovský will be joining us in conversation with Edward Lucas, senior editor at The Economist, to bear witness to Havel’s extraordinary life as documented in his new book Havel: A Life, and to share his own experiences of living through the Velvet Revolution and the formation of the Czech Republic.

First Wednesday Screening: 1989

Wednesday 5 November 2014, 7:00 PM

On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, we are pleased to be part of a pan-European simultaneous screening of the new documentary 1989 by award-winning director Anders Østergaard. The film 1989 is a high-politics drama about the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Iron Curtain. Østergaard recreates the events of 1989 and invites the audience into secret meeting rooms through a mixture of testimonials, archive material, and reconstructed dialogues of the key political players.

Screening: Four Velvet Men Then and Now – Jan Ruml + discussion

Friday 14 November 2014, 7:00 PM

For 20 years, director Pavel Koutecký and later director Jan Šikl followed the lives of four remarkable men who played key roles in the ending of communism in Czechoslovakia in November 1989. What followed was a period of change and transition, offering opportunities to those who were ready to seize them. This screening will be followed by a discussion on the challenges societies are faced with after a regime change.

These events are part of the Made in Prague Festival, 17 October – 30 November 2014.

The Term tells the unique inside story of the Russian opposition movement as Vladimir Putin settles into the Kremlin for a third term. Directors Alexey Pivovarov and Alexander Rastorguev gained exclusive access to anti-corruption blogger Aleksei Navalny and other key opposition figures, including Putin’s god-daughter, Ksenia Sobchak, and Solidarnost leader, Ilya Yashin.

Undercover footage from the front line of opposition protest rallies and intimate discussions among opposition leaders give The Term testimonial value, providing an insight into the lives of men and women for whom protest has become their raison d’être. It also provides a chilling discourse on democratic rights and freedoms in Russia, the attitude of state power toward differently thinking groups, and the tendency of the masses to seek out charismatic leaders.

Directed by Alexey Pivovarov, Alexander Rastorguev and Pavel Kostomarov
Duration: 84′
Year: 2014

As fierce fighting continues in Syria, the death toll according to the United Nations has now reached at least 93,000 and the number of refugees fleeing the country has exceeded 1.5 million.

On the ground, assaults are being conducted on all sides and we have seen increased intervention from other parties, such as Hezbollah. On the international stage efforts are being made to bring all parties to the table and the debate about arming rebels is still raging.

We will be joined by five journalists who have covered the situation in Syria extensively since the uprising began in early 2011. They will be discussing recent developments, on the ground and on the international stage, and asking what changes we could see in coming months.

Chaired by Lyse Doucet, BBC Chief International Correspondent.

The panel:

Dr Halla Diyab is an award-winning screen-writer, producer, broadcaster and the founder and the director of Liberty Media Productions.

Anthony Loyd is an award-winning war correspondent and writer. He is currently roving foreign correspondent for The Times. He has travelled to Syria eight times in the past 15 months to cover the conflict. A former army officer, he served in Northern Ireland and the First Gulf War. He left the army in 1991. He is the author of My War Gone By I Miss It So.

James Harkin has been covering the conflict in Syria from all sides for the last two years, from Damascus, Homs and Aleppo and for The New Republic, The Atlantic Monthly, Newsweek, The Nation, the Guardian and a range of papers throughout Europe. He is director of the think-tank analysing new media and social change, Flockwatching.

Patrick Cockburn has been a Middle East correspondent since 1979, first for the Financial Times, then for The Independent. He has covered the conflict in Syria extensively since protests began in 2011. He is author of several books including The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq and Muqtada Al-Sadr and the Battle for the Future of Iraq.

Throughout June, in association with BBC Persian, we will be joined by experts, journalists and commentators to make sure you are up to date with events in the country. We will be offering a portrait of outgoing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, analysing the candidates and, following the election, we will be asking what the result means for the future of the country.

Sneak Preview BBC Persian screening: Ahmadinejad – The Populist and the Pariah

Monday 3 June 2013, 7:00 PM
The screening is organised by BBC Persian Service.
Since his election in 2005, Iran’s President Ahmadinejad has become the most well-known Iranian since the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Khomeini. Produced by the BBC Persian Service, this documentary looks at the rise of Ahmadinejad and explains how this provincial politician with a PhD in traffic management became a personality to be reckoned with.
Followed by a panel discussion with: Sadeq Saba, head of BBC Persian; Bozorgmehr Sharafedin, filmmaker and journalist and Kasra Naji, special correspondent for BBC Persian TV.

First Wednesday: Who will be the next president of Iran and why does it matter?

Wednesday 5 June 2013, 7:00 PM
On 14 June Iranians will go to to the polls to vote for a president to replace Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but what significance does this election hold? Join us to analyse the approaching election, the main players and what the result will mean for the future of Iran. With: Kelly Golnoush Niknejad, founder and editor-in-chief of the award-winning Tehran Bureau; Roberto Toscano, Italian Ambassador to Iran (2003-2008); Saeed Barzin, Iran analyst with BBC Persian Service and the BBC Monitoring service since 2006; and Roger Cohen, a journalist, author and op-ed columnist for The New York Times.

Iran after Ahmadinejad

Wednesday 26 June 2013, 7:00 PM
Following the presidential election in Iran, we will be bringing together a panel of experts to deliberate the results and what they mean for the future of the country. In association with BBC Persian Service, we will be taking an in-depth look at Iran’s new president, exploring his affiliations and policies both at home and internationally. With: Mark Fitzpatrick, director of the Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Programme at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS); Saeed Barzin, Iran analyst with BBC Persian Service and the BBC Monitoring service since 2006. Additional speakers to be confirmed.

In association with BBC Persian:

https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/iranafterahmedinejad
Following the presidential election in Iran, we will be bringing together a panel of experts to deliberate the results and what they mean for the future of the country.

In association with BBC Persian Service, we will be taking an in-depth look at Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, exploring his affiliations and policies at home and internationally.

Going forward, we will examine how Rouhani will tackle some of the biggest problems facing the country: from the nuclear issue to the economic crisis, and domestic power struggles to human rights.

Chaired by Elizabeth Palmer, CBS News correspondent.

The panel:

Azadeh Moaveni is a former Middle East correspondent for Time magazine who has reported on Iran since 1999. She is the author of Lipstick Jihad, Honeymoon in Tehran, and co-author, with Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi, of Iran Awakening. She writes widely on Iran and the Middle East for Foreign Policy, the Washington Post, and other publications.

Saeed Barzin has been an Iran analyst with BBC Persian Service and the BBC Monitoring service since 2006. He has written extensively on Iranian politics, media and society for general audiences, internal BBC customers and UK government officials. Over the past 15 years he has written for a number of current affairs journals and has published several books, including the Political Biography of Mehdi Bazargan which was among the top ten best-selling books in Iran in mid 1990s.

Mark Fitzpatrick is the director of the Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Programme at International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). He is the author of The Iranian Nuclear Crisis: Avoiding worst-case outcomes. Prior to joining IISS he had a 26-year career in the US Department of State, where in his final posting he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Non-proliferation.

Scott Lucas is professor of American Studies at the University of Birmingham and editor-in-chief of EA WorldView, which specialises in analysis of Iran. A specialist in US and British foreign policy and international relations, especially the Middle East and Iran, he has written and edited eleven books, more than 40 major articles, as well as producing a radio documentary and co-directing the 2007 film Laban!. Formerly a journalist in the US, he wrote for newspapers including the Guardian and The Independent and was an essayist for The New Statesman before founding EA WorldView.

This session is in association with BBC Persian Service.

On 24th April 2013, the Frontline Club hosted a discussion on Iran’s political system in the lead up to the country’s elections in June. Azadeh Moaveni, former Middle East correspondent for Time magazine, hosted the panel of Iranian experts.

The conventional thinking is that the upcoming election will be a highly orchestrated event. Kelly Golnoush Niknejad, founder and editor-in-chief of the award-winning Tehran Bureau commented:

“The candidates are going to be vetted by the Guardian Council . . . conservative candidates who are all loyal to the regime are going to compete, and someone loyal to the Supreme Leader is going to come out of the ballot box. . . . It won’t be that interesting an election.”

With opposition leaders still under house arrest following the disputed 2009 elections, Mehri Honarbin-Holliday, author of Becoming Visible in Iran: Women in Contemporary Iranian Society said:

 “There isn’t the opposition in Iran against the Supreme Leader, because he is a cleric. Millions are saying they don’t want to vote again because it is like rubbing salt in old wounds. But the face of Iran today is not what it was in 1978. The education system has created an Iranian cosmopolitan that is unprecedented.”

Kasra Naji, special correspondent for BBC Persian TV remarked:

“There are these people who are very powerful today in Iran and they have come to the conclusion that to hold onto power is a lot more important than the dictates of the ballot box. If they see that the ballot box does not go their way, they will do everything in their power to make sure that the outcome is what they want to see.”

Moaveni added: “Conservative Iran is not monolithic and there is a diversity of cultural attitudes.”

The audience asked the panel if Iran was on the brink of revolution. Naji responded:

 “At the time of the [1979] revolution there was a political alternative – Khomeini provided that. Today there is no political alternative. Many people have gone through one revolution and seen what it might bring . . . there is little appetite for another.”

The panel discussed the power struggles emerging amidst the Iranian political spectrum, narrowly focused on the right. On the subject of the Supreme Leader, Naji told the audience:

“Ali Khamenei has all the leverages of power at his disposal . . . he is the man with the key to these elections. He wants someone as president who will be subservient to him and his policies.”

Niknejad concluded:

“The ultimate ray of hope is that, so far, anything that has happened has been unpredictable. Nobody really predicted what was going to happen in 2009, so if something happens, it’s not because we sat here predicting it was going to happen.”

Laura Hughes is a history student at University of York and editor of student newspaper Nouse.

You can watch the event and stream or download the podcast below:

https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/presidential-elections-in-iran

While the streets of Moscow are in winter’s cold grip, its living rooms, offices and polling stations are ablaze with debate. Ten graduates of Marina Razbezhkina and Mikhail Ugarov’s Documentary Filmmaking and Theater School are commissioned by Novaya Gazeta, an independent Russian newspaper, to capture the scene.

Loaded with conflict and turbulent emotions, this street-level account of last winter’s demonstrations against Vladimir Putin’s presidential run, chronicles the political process and those dissatisfied with it. Capturing the conversations, rallies, victories and the brutality of the crackdowns, the film explores the interconnection of the church and politics, as well as the division of the nation into patriots and traitors.

Directed by Alexey Zhiryakov, Anna Moiseenko, Anton Seregin, Askold Kurov, Denis Klebleev, Dmitry Kubasov, Elena Khoreva, Madina Mustafina, Nadezhda Leonteva and Sofia Rodkevich
Duration: 79′
Year: 2012

On 14 June, Iranians will go to the polls to vote in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s successor. As debate around the elections begins to heat up we will be joined by a panel of experts to talk us through the power struggles and the state of opposition movements.

Although Ahmadinejad cannot run again, he has made clear he has no intention of ending his second term quietly. Our panel will be examining the power struggle at the heart of Iran’s political system and how it will play out in the lead up to the election.

A crackdown on the media has already been seen, with the arrests of 15 journalists at the end of January. With opposition leaders still under house arrest following the disputed 2009 elections, we will be asking if, once again, we will see protests on the streets of Tehran.

Chaired by Azadeh Moaveni, a former Middle East correspondent for Time magazine who has reported on Iran since 1999. She is the author of Lipstick Jihad, Honeymoon in Tehran, and co-author, with Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi, of Iran Awakening. She writes widely on Iran and the Middle East for Foreign Policy, the Washington Post, and other publications.

The panel:

Mehri Honarbin-Holliday is senior research fellow at Canterbury Christ Church University and fellow at the Centre for Gender Studies at SOAS. She is the author of Becoming Visible in Iran: Women in Contemporary Iranian Society and Masculinities in Urban Iran.

Kelly Golnoush Niknejad is founder and editor-in-chief of the award-winning Tehran Bureau, which is hosted by the Guardian. She is also the inaugural recipient of the Innovator Award from Columbia Journalism School for “inspiring, creating, developing, or implementing new ideas that further the cause of journalism”.

Kasra Naji, special correspondent for BBC Persian TV and author of Ahmadinejad: The Secret History of Iran’s Radical Leader.

https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/presidential-elections-in-iran

By Nicole Hunt

Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Zapatero is scheduled to request the dissolution of Parliament on Monday to make way for early elections on 20 November. Spain was not due to hold elections until March next year, but Zapatero has come under heavy criticism amid debt and budget problems, with persistent rumours that Spain will be the next country to ask for an EU bailout.